The Chef in His Studio

September is always a beautiful and delicious month in Portland. You can bank on it.

One of things I'll remember about this particular September in Portland is being invited to lunch by Robert Reynolds at his Chef Studio in Southeast Portland.

The Chef Studio is a small, workmanlike space in the rear of the building on SE 28th Avenue that also houses Ken's Artisan Pizza and Masu East (a sushi restaurant).

The Chef Studio is a more-or-less square room with a stove, sink, and counters on one wall, industrial shelving on another, books and art on a third wall, and more shelving on the fourth.

A great big square table sits smack dab in the center, directly under a generous skylight. It's a tossup as to which are the room's best features, the table-and-skylight, or the powder blue stove from France that looks vintage but isn't. (If anything in the room reflected Robert's gentle but driving spirit and his zest for all things Gallic, it was that stove.)

Three of us from Northwest Palate sat and talked with one of Robert's culinary students, a jewelry artist who has somehow come under Robert's spell (I didn't learn how they met exactly). She hopes he'll teach her to work as comfortably with food as she does with glass and metal.

Also in the room was Caroline Rennard, who has spent many years working as a marketing and graphic arts professional. She's always loved food and sees in Reynolds a talented and highly intuitive instructor who doesn't fit the usual niches for teaching the culinary arts. So she's been cooking with him and helping him publicize the two kinds of classes he teaches: evening classes for people who like to cook, and intensive daytime study for people who are already cooking for a living or pretty sure that's what they want to do.

We were there to brainstorm with him, but you'd probably rather know what we ate! I'm happy to oblige, though I regret I was not taking notes on how it all got made.

We all had little bites of crostini (bread from Grand Central) with a simple mixture of mascarpone and creme fraiche.

Our first course was pasta with a cool and savory sauce of uncooked chopped green tomatoes tossed with roasted garlic, capers, a little red onion, and olive oil very lightly flavored with chile pepper. We all sipped a 2004 Oregon Pinot Noir from Hatcher Wineworks.

Our second course was lightly breaded sauteed chicken breasts served with tender golden zucchini cakes and a red pepper coulis. Many clean plates in evidence.

We finished with a slice of blueberry pie, the warm berries just barely held together with a bit of cream, sugar, and flour.

Apart from maybe the mascarpone, there was nothing you couldn't find at the local farmers' market. Certainly not a lot of pomp and flash. Another reminder that trendsetters quickly become "so five minutes ago" while good cooking is forever.